


Empty

by Davechicken



Series: Kylux - Fluff & Angst [126]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Co-Dependency, Depression, M/M, Major Depressive Episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 04:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8954023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: After he loses the weapon, Hux is... running on empty.





	

Hux looks at the alarm. It beeps at him, and normally he’s up at the same time as it’s beeping. He wakes right before, and his feet hit the floor when the noises sound, and then he goes through his daily routine. His body enacts the readiness as his mind progresses through the day in advance. The meetings he has, the reports he needs, the objectives he must complete. 

But today, he hasn’t even lifted the covers. He listens to the beeping get more irate, and he can’t. He can’t make his body behave, because he’s just so damn… It’s not tired? But it is? It’s not the tired of having worked all day and you need to sleep, it’s the tired of ‘I just woke up and feel like I slept two hours and someone kicked me in the ribcage and also what is the point in even breathing or doing anything’. 

Which is not like him at all. 

He tries to imagine the steps of getting up. Brushing teeth. Washing. Shaving. Dressing. He tries to imagine himself doing it, but he can’t. He just doesn’t _want_ to. He wants to lie in bed and go back to sleep and wake up tomorrow like he used to wake up. Full of enthusiasm. Devoted to the cause. Sure of his place in the galaxy. 

(No, a voice says, you were lying, you always have been lying. You have always been useless, you have never been any good at this. You are as useless as _he_ always thought you were.)

The beeping stops. He’s lain in bed through the whole alarm. He’s already several minutes late, and people are going to notice. He’s never been late for duty in his _life_ without being so sick he needed to be carted to the med bay. 

He’s not sick. Not in body, anyway. He can’t feel any physical problems in his frame, he just… has lost the part of his mind that can make his body _do_ things. It’s gone. 

Hux pulls the covers over his head and then goes back to sleep.

***

An urgent comm comes through, and Hux realises he’s being an absolute baby. He should just get up and do things. Why isn’t he? Because he’s useless. 

He can feel the gnawing in his stomach, but he thinks if he _tried_ to eat, it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t stay in, or it would taste wrong, or… whatever. He pulls the covers over his head and groans. 

Get up. Get up. Get up. He’s ruined several hours already, and it’s one of those ‘I wasted five minutes so I should waste five hours’ lack of logics. 

But he has work to do, so he barks a rough comment about a virus to the questioning Lieutenant, and forces himself to get up.

***

Everyone is looking at him, even when they’re not. Hux can _feel_ it. He sways on the deck, trying to lock his knees. They _look_ at him. Wondering. 

What are they thinking? Can they see through his uniform to the hollow man below? Do they realise he’s just a walking bag of bones?

(Did he ever feel different? Was there ever a time when he didn’t feel cold and empty inside?)

Every command he makes he second-guesses. He has to sound like he knows what he’s doing, but does he? He lost his magnum opus. The thing he’d spent years of his life working on. He’d failed to learn from the lessons of the Empire, and thus, he shouldn’t be in command. He should be - what? Executed? Tossed into space? That’s probably what the Leader will do with him, when he’s finished with Kylo.

He’s just not important enough to come first, of course he isn’t. 

Maybe he’s not even important enough for his fuck ups to mean a thing, either.

He glides through the day, forces food into himself, and climbs into his empty bed, glad Kylo isn’t there to see him slide into nothing.

***

Day after day, and he can’t think about what’s happening to Kylo. He doesn’t want to know what the Leader is doing, because if he thinks about it too long he is crippled with horror. 

Get up. Force the clothes on. Walk through the day. Make the decisions. Keep the face straight at the negative reports. Bark the questions back in line. Retreat.

Repeat. 

Retreat.

Repeat.

***

When Ren finally returns, Hux isn’t there to acknowledge him. He’s busy working, and people need to see him working.

He isn’t there when the man steps aboard, and he isn’t there when he comes to his (their) rooms. He stays up all night, working. 

If he doesn’t face the problem, he doesn’t need to acknowledge it, and therefore he doesn’t need to admit it’s real. He stays up until he can’t any longer, and then he makes sure Ren’s gone back to his own rooms before he retreats to his bed.

Maybe if they never see one another, they can pretend what happened didn’t happen. It’s not that he hated it, or regretted it, it’s… it’s that he doesn’t know that it can continue. He isn’t who he was before, and he can’t allow anyone close enough to see.

He’s three days into denial when he finally has to see the man.

Changing the door codes wasn’t enough. Kylo is already inside.

Hux wonders if he could turn around and leave, or if it would be cowardly. If he could ask Kylo to leave, or…

“Hux… why won’t you see me?”  


“I’m busy with my work.”  


“Hux…”  


“I’m sorry. I was… I’m sorry.” It was a mistake. He can’t let such a thing as personal cravings, or his weaknesses get in the way of his duties. It was his own fault. He can’t. He can’t…  


The Knight reaches for his arm, and Hux wants to explode. 

“Please don’t shut me out. Please. Coming back to you was the only thing that kept me going.”

“WHY?” Hux demands. “I’m nothing! I’m no one! I - I _blew_ it, Kylo! My one chance at _being_ anything, and I blew it!” The hysteria he’s sat on for weeks, for months, all festers out like a split blister, and he feels the depths of his emotions at last.  


(This must be how Kylo feels all the time. No wonder he is how he is. Hux would go mad. Hux _is_ going mad.)

Hands clutch his arms, and worried brown eyes stare at him. “You are more than just _anything_ , Hux. You’re not the Starkiller. You’re not what you do for the Order. You’re _you_.”

“And what’s that?” Hux wants to laugh, he does. He isn’t anything at all, and Kylo is wrong.  


“Enough and more than enough for me. _Everything_ for me. The only thing I think about that still makes me smile. Hux, I… can’t do this without you.”  


“But I’m _nothing_ ,” Hux insists. “I can’t help you. I don’t have the Force, I’m nobody.”  


“I don’t need you to _do_ **anything** ,” Kylo insists. “Not anything but stay with me. Give me someone to please, someone to come home to. Give me someone who…” And he wobbles, then. “You do care, don’t you? About me?”  


“So much I go out the other side and I can’t feel anything at all,” Hux whispers, more honest than he’s ever been. “I’m not… a nice person. I’m not a kind person. I don’t know why you love me.”  


“I love you because you _are_. Maybe not the most nice and caring person, no, but you still _are_. And you’re smart, and driven, and you make me laugh. You… make me feel like a _person_ , Hux. Not a weapon. Not a nightmare. You made me…”  


Hux pushes his face into Kylo’s shoulder. He can’t have done those things. He’s horrible. He’s useless. He’s…

“I’m sorry,” Hux says, hushed, cowed. “I’ve just been so empty. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Since I lost the weapon, and then… I couldn’t bear thinking what he’d do to you…”  


“So let me in, now. Let me in. I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t want to go.”  


Hux feels grief swell like the soundtrack in a holo. The intensity of it is crushing, and he won’t cry, he won’t. Four arms merge into a single, huge hug, and he feels the heat he’d missed against himself, and is terrified by how quickly Kylo can reduce him to this.

How quickly he can fall apart without him there.

He’s never needed someone other than himself before, and the distance - that space between them - had been so awful he’d literally shut half of his heart down. Being so reliant on a single point of failure (like his Starkiller) is absolutely terrifying. Inefficient. Dangerous. 

“I’m afraid,” he admits.  


“Of what?”  


“How much I need you, too.”  


Kylo laughs as he holds him, and Hux finds - weirdly - better. Not like everything is wiped away, but now the fear is voiced and Kylo hasn’t let go of him… it hurts a little less. He pushes deeper in, burying himself in black and heat. Hiding within his body, within his grip.

Kylo isn’t disgusted, or horrified, or mocking. He wants to be wanted, to be needed. He _wants_ this co-existence, the one that terrifies Hux so with how easily upset it can be, how… weak he’s become without him. Kylo can leave, and Hux falls apart.

And yet. Before Kylo… he’d existed, but had he really lived? He tries to recall, but the memories are dark and distant. No laughter, no love, no… _life_.

“Just let me love you,” Kylo begs. “Please. Don’t tell me you’re better off without me.”  


“I’m not.” Oh, but his chest hurts. “But I can’t do this without you, either.”  


“ _Then don’t shut me out now I’m back_.”  


“I’m sorry.” So sorry. So very, very sorry. “I need you. I’m just…”  


“It’s okay,” Kylo says, and pulls him towards the couch. “I’m here, now. I’m here. Let me help you, like you helped me.”  


Is this pain like the one Kylo had suffered? He blinks owlishly up at him. “Does it get better?”

A nod. “There’s still bad days, but you get good ones, too. And when you’re around, even the bad days weren’t as bad. Not any more.”

“It’s… it’s worth it?”  


“More than worth it.”  


Hux allows Kylo to take him to the couch, and they curl up together. Slowly relearning the curves, the bones, the pain. He shudders and tries to feel less like an open and raw nerve, and fights a laugh at how close to madness he really is.

But Kylo is here. He’s here. Hux’s sense of himself and his surroundings slowly spreads to include him again, and he just breathes him deep inside his lungs.

Oh, he missed him. He missed him so much he forgot how to _be_. But he’s home now, and Hux won’t let him go again. No matter. What.


End file.
